


Someone to watch over me

by rivkat



Category: Fringe
Genre: Brown Betty AU, Eight crazy nights, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-04
Updated: 2011-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-14 09:59:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/148057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivkat/pseuds/rivkat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for runpunkrun: Olivia/Peter, in the noir AU with the cellphones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Someone to watch over me

Peter has to be careful, with only half a heart. (And all of it yours, he never says, because that’s just mush; even so, there’s something very much like that in his eyes, and it never fails to make Olivia’s own heart ache when she sees it.) Once past the intrigue with Walter Bishop, though, Peter finds it easy to be careful, especially with Olivia around as a compelling example of how to do it the other way.

He invents for her, because Walter taught him many things and only a few are too tainted to use: bananas whose brown spots bloom only in the shape of valentine hearts, no matter how they’re bruised. Shoes that grow or shrink in height depending on her mood (which works less well when other people are wearing copies; the computer chip inside is perhaps too specifically calibrated). Pens that write what you meant to say—the Boston police department orders ten cases for suspects to write their confessions, then throws them all away when one cop too many uses one to write his report and makes the front page of the _Globe_. Chess-playing dirigibles: the chessboard spans four states.

Olivia goes out into the world and finds more lost souls in need of care. One day she brings home a little girl. Peter never asks for Ella’s story. He’s heard enough of sadness, seen enough of children’s nightmares. Peter doesn’t need to know who Ella was. Peter thinks: She’s here and Olivia loves her and she has the great good sense to love Olivia back, fierce and foremost, so sometimes it’s like she’s competing with Peter for Olivia’s regard. Except that Peter, being the grownup, knows that sometimes, in the best cases, love can stretch like taffy, wrapping around everyone. Hearts may have to be divided, but love—the love they have, the love they toss between them like red hots at the ballgame—love can come in through the cracks.

They go out dancing, and when they come back, after midnight, Peter pays the sitter while Olivia sneaks into Ella’s room to watch over her undisturbed dreams.

This is how they live: happily, ever after.


End file.
